Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Religion from STRATEGIC-CULTURE.ORGIt seems so strange, twenty-seven years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, to be living through a new Cold War with (as it happens, capitalist) Russia. The Russian president is attacked by the U.S. political class and media as they never attacked Soviet leaders; he is personally vilified as a corrupt, venal dictator, who arrests or assassinates political opponents and dissident journalists, and is hell-bent on the restoration of the USSR.(The latter claim rests largely on Vladimir Putin’s comment that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was a “catastrophe” and “tragedy” — which in many respects it was. The press chooses to ignore his comment that “Anyone who does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart, while anyone who wants to restore it has no brain.” It conflicts with the simple talking-point that Putin misses the imperial Russia of the tsars if not the commissars and, burning with resentment over the west’s triumph in the Cold War, plans to exact revenge through wars of aggression and territorial expansion.)The U.S. media following its State Department script depicts Russia as an expansionist power. That it can do so, so successfully, such that even rather progressive people—such as those appalled by Trump’s victory who feel inclined to blame it on an external force—believe it, is testimony to the lingering power and utility of the Cold War mindset.The military brass keep reminding us: We are up against an existential threat! One wants to say that this — obviously — makes no sense! Russia is twice the size of the U.S. with half its population. Its foreign bases can be counted on two hands. The U.S. has 800 or so bases abroad.

By Andrew KorybkoSummaryRussia will continue to “clean house” in removing or functionally neutralizing uni-polar-linked elements in the country whether through public or discrete actions, and this will empower the country to more assuredly practice its multi-vectored diplomacy of geopolitical balancing and thus strengthen its position as the core of the emerging Multi-polar World Order.

House Cleaning

2016 was a wonderful year for Russian patriots, as President Putin got them excited by going after corrupt Economic Development Minister Ulyukaev and arresting him in mid-November for accepting bribes. Ulyukaev is a hated figure among patriotic Russians who see him as a neoliberal sellout to the uni-polar world order, so his removal from the political scene was met with joy by many people.

The Russian government insists that this was just a simple anti-corruption operation and that there wasn’t anything deeper to it, but popular military analyst and blogger The Saker predicted earlier in the year that Putin would undertake such a move against what he calls “Medvedev’s allies”, or in other words, the “Atlantic Integrationists” who behave as a sixth column on behalf of the US.